One Night on the Island(78)

I get up and make myself a den on the sofa with pillows and my beloved patchwork blanket, then I fire up my laptop and open a blank document. Message received, universe, I think, flexing my fingers. It’s time to write.





Mack





6 November


Boston


IT’S OVER NOW


I became a depressing single-dad cliché tonight. Ordered a pizza rather than cooking a decent meal, let the kids drink soda at the movies even though we’ve always been careful about their teeth. It wasn’t done to score cool-parent points against Susie, I just wanted to give the boys all the stuff I could give them because I couldn’t give them the one thing they asked for when I picked them up from school this afternoon – for their mom to come with us too. I tortured myself in the dark movie theatre imagining them getting their heads together, deciding which of them would be brave enough to ask me, trying to pick out the right words to get their parents together for a few hours. I’ve been that kid, the one who thinks if he can just force his folks to spend time together they’ll remember how good things used to be. I haven’t forgotten our good times either. I didn’t tell them that, of course, just glossed over it and sold them on fizzy soda and as much popcorn as they could handle. Distraction, the oldest trick in the parenting handbook. Hey, Nate, look at my stupid elephant impersonation, not the cut I’m cleaning up on your knee. Hey, Leo, let’s go to the skate park instead of thinking about that kid’s party you didn’t get invited to. It’s easy when they’re small; they look at you and they absolutely know you’re going to make their world better. I hate that I can’t do that for them this time. Soda and popcorn is a poor substitute for their mother, but it’s the best I could come up with at the time. And now they’re late for bed and nodding off on either side of me on the couch, my arms around them as we watch the sports headlines on the eleven o’clock news. I hate having them stay here in this condo, even though their presence transforms it into a home for a few hours for me. They pretend they think it’s cool but they’re terrible liars. Maybe after Christmas I’ll look around for somewhere better. I pull the boys closer on both sides of me, my feet propped on the glass coffee table.

‘You’re the peanut butter,’ Nate says, glancing up.

I look down at him. ‘I am?’

‘In the sandwich,’ he says. ‘We’re the bread, you’re the peanut butter in the middle.’

‘Can I be ham instead?’ I say. He knows I don’t like peanut butter. ‘Or stretchy cheese, the kind you get on pizza?’

He shakes his head and grins, closing his eyes as he settles deeper into the crook of my shoulder. ‘Crunchy peanut butter is my favourite thing in a sandwich.’

I press a kiss against the citrus scent of his hair. ‘I know. Okay. I’ll be peanut butter.’

He opens one Susie-blue eye and looks up at me. ‘Crunchy?’

‘Crunchy,’ I say. He closes his eye again, satisfied, and I wonder how something as crazy as peanut butter can make my chest ache with emotion as I think of Cleo, of how a shared dislike of peanut butter was one of our secrets in the dark.

Leo’s more asleep than awake on my other side, his fingers clutching a handful of my T-shirt. His hair smells of the same shampoo as Nate’s. Mine used to smell the same too. It’s the smallest of insignificant details, a tiny wedge between us because I couldn’t remember the exact brand of shampoo, even though I sniffed every damn bottle in the store. On the one hand it’s really not important, but on the other hand, separation is made up of a million tiny disassociations that eventually add up to passing someone on the street and barely recognizing them.

There are two breakfast plates in the kitchen sink, two coffee cups on the table when I run the boys home, mid-morning as agreed. Susie sees me notice, and I know she wishes she’d cleared them away. It messes with my head to think of Robert sleeping here in my bed. Do I have any right to the anger that simmers my blood when I imagine his head on my pillow, his hands on my wife? I correct myself. Ex-wife. Is that the term I should use since we’ve been apart for a year? We’re in this weird limbo, still officially married. There’s a huge schism down the middle of us, we’re a landmass splintered in two by an earthquake. There must have been a hairline crack there for a long time, one I didn’t notice. Even when it widened, I didn’t pay enough attention. I didn’t see that damn crack until it was a canyon, too wide to safely jump, and Susie was on the other side, drifting away. And now Robert is standing over there beside her in an eye-wateringly awful vest, and I’m over here feeling like a stranger in my own house. It’s a lot.

‘I was thinking about Thanksgiving,’ I say.

Susie busies herself loading the dishwasher, tense. For as long as we’ve been together, we’ve hosted our parents here for Thanksgiving.

‘I thought I’d spend it with my mom this year,’ I say. ‘See Grandma, show her the photos of Salvation.’

I see the relief on her face as she straightens, a fight avoided.

‘I’d like to see your photos sometime too,’ she says. ‘Was it everything you’ve always hoped?’

I haven’t found the right time to tell Susie about Cleo yet. She’s just handed me an in. The kids are in the den, Robert can’t be heading over seeing as he’s evidently just left, and I have nowhere else I need to be.